A key hub along both the Silk Road and Yangtze River Economic Belt, Chengdu in Sichuan province is grasping the opportunity to become a nationalcentralcity and world-class aviation center.

The Chengdu Tianfu International Airport in Lujia township, Jianyang, which started construction on May 27, about50kilometersfrom downtownChengdu will make Chengdu the third city on the Chinese mainland to have a second civil airport, after Beijing and Shanghai.

With an investment of 71.86 billion yuan ($10.8 billion), the airport will be completed in 2019 and go into operation in 2020, according to the Sichuan Development and Reform Commission.

The long-term target for the airport is to have six runways, with annual capacity of 90 million passengers and 2 million metric tons of cargo.

Liu Yi, deputy chief architect of the China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute, which designed the new airport, said that the airport will be connected to a highly advanced land transport network, including highways, subways and high-speed railways.

"It will allow for the easy transfer of passengers and cargo to destinations around Chengdu and its neighboring cities," he said. "The subway that connects the airport with downtown will travel at speeds as high as 140km/h, so a one-way trip will only take half an hour."

He said the airport will not only be a transport building, but a giant complex that combines accommodation, offices, shopping, dining and entertainment.

The airport has also planned an economic zone to boost the development of an airport economy, making it an important growth engine for city development, Liu said.

Zhang Xicheng, assistant to the general manager of the Sichuan Province Airport Group, said that passenger volumes in the current Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport have kept rising in recent years, meaning it is almost running at full capacity.

The Shuangliu airport handled 42 million passengers in 2015, a 12.1 percent increase year-on-year, according to statistics released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

"Experts expect annual aviation passenger volumes in Chengdu to reach 75 million by 2025, so we need a larger airport to meet this increasing demand," he said.

Zhang said the new airport would serve international passenger routes and most of the international cargo routes, while Shuangliu airport would handle domestic flights and some international cargo routes.

Cao Yunchun, director of the Airport Economy Institute at Civil Aviation University of China, said Chengdu is faced with plenty of development opportunities with the country's Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiatives, and the Yangtze River Economic Belt."The construction of the new airport will further shorten Chengdu's distance to the world and boost the development of the city's aviation industry, making the city one of China's top-level aviation hubs after Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou," he said.

Deng Ling, a professor of economics at Sichuan University, said the new airport will boost Chengdu's opening-up and add wings to the city's economic development. ShengYi,deputydirectoroftheSichuanAcademyofSocialSciences,saidthenewairport wouldhelpthecitytoattracttalentandresources,enhanceinternationalexchangesandboost industrydevelopment.

By the end of last year, Chengdu had direct economic and trade relations with 223 major cities worldwide, including 20 that have opened trade and tourism offices in the city. Of the Fortune Global 500 companies, 278 have a presence in Chengdu.

In addition, 16 foreign countries have been approved to set up a consulate in Chengdu, the largest number in western China.

The city also has 31 sister cities worldwide.

(China Daily 09/24/2016 page18)